UNESCO’s executive board is choosing a new leader to replace departing director Irina Bokova, whose tenure was marred by funding troubles and tension over its inclusion of Palestine as a member.

Intense diplomatic wrangling has marked the race among seven candidates to become the next director general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Arab countries have long wanted to lead the organization, though divisions over Palestinian membership have complicated their push.

Voting by UNESCO’s 58-member executive board starts Monday and continues through the week until a candidate wins a majority. The choice then goes to the full UNESCO general assembly next month for final approval.

Leading candidates include Qian Tang of China, former Egyptian government minister Moushira Khattab and Qatar’s former Culture Minister Hamad bin Abdulaziz Al-Kawari.

UNESCO should reject the candidacy of former Qatari minister of culture Hamad bin Abdulaziz Al-Kawari for its director- general, Simon Wiesenthal Center’s European Office has said.

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On Friday, Shimon Samuels, international relations director at the Wiesenthal Center, wrote to UNESCO’s Executive Board chairman Michael Worbs, saying that when Al-Kawari was culture minister, Qatar sold texts at the Frankfurt Book fair that “fomented” conspiracy theories against Jews.

“Mr. Chairperson, he who apparently endorses the language of [the Nazi minister of propaganda Joseph] Goebbels must not head the intellectual arm of the United Nations. We expect you to advise the Executive Board accordingly,” said Samuels.

He added that Qatar supported UN resolutions on Jerusalem that ignored Jewish ties to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.

Egypt and Africa’s nominee for the UNESCO Director General post, Moushira Khattab, said that the organization pays a heavy tax by politicization, while it is a U.N. agency for education, heritage and science.

“UNESCO should leave politics to the United Nations, but we will not go back in terms of the decisions taken,” Khattab stated in an interview with the French Le Point Magazine.

Khattab noted that she looks forward to building consensus among countries to move forward together, and she hopes that the U.N. will work in the health and education sectors in Palestine like anywhere else.

She praised the good cooperation between Palestinians and Israelis in UNESCO programs.

“It is clear that we will not politicize the organization in a few days, but we can help in gradually restoring confidence in UNESCO,” she said. “We have to be close to people in our mission.”
She stressed that the world is suffering from extremism and terrorism, and that UNESCO alone is capable of defeating them, because terrorism will not be eliminated by weapons, but by education.

Grateful for the support of Magda Haroun-Head of Cairo's Jewish Community working hard to preserve Egypt's Jewish cultural heritage pic.twitter.com/hvz0vrCElV

The other candidate Israel had considered supporting is China’s Qian Tang, who has been assistant director general for education at UNESCO in recent years. Jerusalem considers him a man who wants to bring UNESCO back to its professional activities, and distance it as much as possible from political issues.

Not that I expect it to make too much of a difference. While the world’s scum and villainy have the votes that matter, expect the same ol’ same ol’.

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